Reed Pigman, the owner of Texas Jet, says he is a gas station for airplanes. Fortunately, he doesn't use today's gas station as a model for thinking about his business. I am old enough to remember when my mother would pull the car into a gas station and a person would actually come out to ask her what kind of gas she wanted. That person would proceed to check under the hood and would have a look at the tires to see if he thought he should check the pressure. My mom never had to get out of the car. That was then (1960s) and this is now.
The Professional Pilot magazine named Texas Jet one of the top 10 independent, fixed-based operators (FBO) in the United States and we went to see why these customers love Texas Jet. Owner Reed Pigman is proud that his customers don't focus on the price of fuel, they focus on the service they receive from his team at Texas Jet.
We discovered that Texas Jet is a place the pilots enjoy while they waiting for their customers to return. But more importantly, the pilot's customer is given the red-carpet treatment! There is a very-demanding supply chain within these operations. The pilot is the customer of Texas Jet and the passengers are the customer of the pilot. Though a few pilots own their plane, most pilots are the full-time employees of the company who owns the plane, and often the passengers are their key executives, but passengers could also be people who have a fractional ownership in that plane, people who have chartered it, or people who are just paying for an "empty leg." Everyone is a choice customer and all expect top-quality care and attention to detail.
You can learn more about Texas Jet at Small Business School.
